Hema Oza
Bigger is not always better.
Sure, the Jack Welch saying that a company needs to be No. 1 or 2 in its market to matter may be good advice for a larger company, but it is totally irrelevant to the smaller, private firm, says Bo Burlingham, editor-at-large at Inc. magazine and author of Small Giants. "So much of what we read about business is related to large, publicly traded companies, which really constitute a tiny percentage of all the businesses out there," the author says. "But there are literally hundreds if not thousands of companies that actually do strive to be great, instead of big." So what exactly is it that makes a company great? This is the question many readers find themselves asking after they read Small Giants. In the end, people will come up with different answers to that question, but what Burlingham says he has found is that the 14 great companies he talks about in his book all share the "business equivalent of charisma, [or] mojo," as he defines it. "When a leader has charisma, you want to follow him or her," Burlingham says. "When a business has charisma, you want to be associated with that business." All the businesses in the book, he says, have five qualities in common, which make up this mojo. First, they are all companies owned and led by people "who had a clear understanding of who they were, what they wanted out of their business and why." Second they are companies that had "very, very close relationships with the communities in which they did business," Burlingham says. "Not only did they give back to those communities, but the communities molded the personality of the business." Next, the companies have cultivated "very close, intimate, one-on-one relationships" with their customers and suppliers. The fourth characteristic has to do with the business owners' relationships with employees. "The irony was that as close as these companies were to their customers, they believed that their customers come second and the employees come first ... because once you get above a certain size, it's the employees that have the relationships with the customers and suppliers and so forth," Burlingham points out. "They realized that if they wanted to deliver to their customers the kind of experience that they considered important, the employees needed to feel that same passion for the business that they themselves did." To view Hema Oza's video take of today's small-business segment, click here.
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